


The Antichrist Trilogy

by soddingwankers



Category: Morning Glories
Genre: Alternate Family Structures, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Foster families, M/M, Murder Primary School, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2017-12-30 07:08:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soddingwankers/pseuds/soddingwankers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Guillaume was recruited to spend his life in the desert, he didn't understand what he would find-- or what it would cost him.</p>
<p>Title is from Kishi Bashi's "I Am The Antichrist To You".</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Antichrist Trilogy

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends! This story has been with me for a very long time, in varying stages of completeness. I've decided that it works better in chapters, instead of a single work, so here it is-- the first of three. I'll post the accompanying playlist soon, which has done a lot towards this one. I've set the rating to M for now, and I'm fairly certain it'll stay that way; there will be some form of sexytimes later in the work, but I'll change the rating if I need to when that time comes. Thanks for reading!

I.  
Guillaume Sorel was six years old and sitting on the edge of a metal-framed bunk bed when he learned that other boys didn’t like him.  
His parents were dead, his home...was destroyed, most likely, but either way lost to him forever, and that had conspired to make him an easy target for whomever wiped his life off the map. Days after the smoke had cleared, hiding in the remains of his basement with the few things he’d scavenged, out of water and low on food, he had taken the hand that Abraham offered him, appearing out of the ashes of his burnt childhood, reaching down to the scared and soot-covered little boy glaring up at him. He was fed, given clean clothes, a new place to live, a course heavy in combat and light in education, and sent on his way. Abraham became distant; not the father figure Guillaume had hoped for, but one who appeared seldom and always with great gravity. It turned Guillaume to more solitary pursuits. He began stealing from the library and adding to the few books he’d saved from the wreckage of his house, reading late at night when there was no one to know. He kept his head down, watched the older kids, and dodged the punches when he could.  
His roommate found his stack of books, made fun of him for reading The Little Prince in French, said it was a book for sissies, and tore it into pieces.  
Guillaume didn’t cry until hours past lights out, and muffled his tears into his pillow. The next day he built a fire against a back building with the pages as kindling using only a magnifying glass and his roommate’s favorite comic. In the crowd that formed he found a few allies by their sly smiles. His roommate came back with a black eye and a swollen lip, and didn’t bother Guillaume again.

II.  
Weapons training started at 7:15, after breakfast and roll. At age eight, Guillaume had surpassed his yearmates in hand-to-hand and was beginning handgun training. He started to practice alone at the far end of the range when the older kids in the session learned that he never missed a shot and began to conveniently block his way when he tried to pick a target. His stall was within earshot of the RSO and far enough away that if anyone approached, he’d see them coming. This morning he was working with a Kel-Tec 9 mil, clustering his shots just off-center at a hundred meters. To anyone glancing towards his target, they would think he was missing every shot, but these days no one wanted to be seen with him long enough to notice that every one he fired hit within an inch of the last.  
He’d learned the hard way that being better than everyone meant bruises where no one could see. It meant coming back to his room after dinner to find someone had pissed in his bed, and he had to explain it or clean the mess up without anyone finding out. Tattling meant he got his fingers broken in a door, and even his allies wouldn’t help him then. He learned how to set bones from a book in the library, how to sew up the slashes in his clothes, how to hide his sneakers under his mattress at night, and kept quiet.  
When he used his free periods in the training rooms learning krav maga, they never found out. 

III.  
He turned ten, and turned the tables. His extra work paid off, and he was suddenly stronger than everyone else. He grew, and used his new height to his advantage. If he shoved the right person, or sparred a bit too roughly, people started to leave him alone. The smaller kids avoided him entirely, and anyone his size knew not to make his life difficult. His bed was left alone, he always got food when he needed it, and his homework stopped going missing. Guillaume chose his targets, and hit them off-center. Life improved. He excelled in physical training, learned he wouldn’t beat Irina in tactics, learned to like people-- made friends who would be hard pressed to beat him in combat. He started to ask Akiko for help in Chemistry when he needed it, and taught her how to fix her choke hold until she learned that she could catch him off guard with her sweet, shy smile and move so fast he was on the mat before he could react. People noticed who he spent time with and didn’t mess with them.  
It was almost a year later that Abraham brought him Hisao Fukayama.

IV.  
Hisao was the quietest kid he’d ever met, and almost one of the saddest. The first day he showed up in mess, head low, breakfast tray clutched like it was a life vest and he was drowning, Guillaume watched him from across the hall as he sat alone and ate without looking up. Oatmeal, toast, apple. He was an unknown quantity that no one wanted to touch, so he remained isolated, a somber and immobile human-shaped space at the table, and Guillaume felt like he was the one being watched though Hisao never looked up.  
On their way out the door someone helped him trip, and Guillaume heard the loud smack of a body on concrete. In a flash, Akiko was there, helping him up and taking him to the kitchen for ice before Guillaume knew what he wanted to do. When Hisao appeared again later with a purple-black bruise forming across his jaw, Guillaume asked a question to the right person and dislocated the shoulder of the boy who’d tripped Hisao.

The weeks passed and they watched each other. Guillaume never saw Hisao’s eyes, but he felt them. The kid was broken, but his was a fresh break, a compound fracture still bleeding. Unlike every other child in this desert hellhole, he didn’t have a dead space inside him. Some of these kids were born dead, without the capacity for pain, following orders like a simple machine. They were reckless, uncaring, and would grow up to be hard men and women with little talent but big guns. Some kids cared, crumbled, tried but couldn’t take it. They were found dead by their own hand, or caught as they fell and shipped away if they were lucky. If you can’t make yourself strong enough to turn off the part of you that says, someone loves me, they were taught, you will lose your mind. Guillaume forgot that the first time he was told to kill a person; somewhere, a vestige of empathy he didn’t know he still had reared its ugly head and told him he was wrong, he was wrong, this was wrong. It took him weeks to come back. The next time, he remembered his training. He made a place inside his head, he aimed, he fired. Hisao didn’t know about the dead places yet. 

He would learn.

V.  
They were twelve, and Hisao talked. He was good at math and strategy, getting better at combat, and excelled at meditation. Guillaume poked fun at him or smacked him in the head when he could, and watched him when he couldn’t. If he tried, Guillaume could almost stop the pinched feeling in his stomach when he shoved Hisao hard enough to hurt him. He’d close his eyes when he hit the ground, face beginning to crumple silently, and Guillaume had to run, run from that face and the way it made his body feel things he didn’t know or want. Empathy, they said, was the greatest weakness any of them possessed.

If Hisao stopped standing with Guillaume when they were near strangers, neither of them noticed. Akiko tailed Hisao like a puppy, and before any of them realized what had happened Hisao was studying with them when he needed help. Later, they tried to pinpoint when it happened. Vanessa claimed she brought him first, after he’d helped her with her strategy puzzles, but Akiko insisted it was her doing. Ian rolled his eyes and told them all to shut up while Irina cleaned her gun threateningly. No one asked why she had it; they had long ago stopped questioning Irina.  
No longer lost on the periphery of the group, Hisao opened up. He was still quiet, but less broken, his wounds scarred and hardened. He’d found some security, knowing that when these kids found someone they wouldn’t let him go. He learned how to survive in the desert with his team.


End file.
